OBJECT: Social stigma and prejudice against schizophrenia hinder the prevention of the disease, early treatment and social rehabilitation. This stigma and the negative viewpoint against schizophrenia are enhanced by the mass media. This study investigated newspaper articles on psychosis, which strongly influence the public recognition of the illness. METHOD: The newspaper articles of Dong-A Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo from March 1998 to February 2000 were reviewed through a news-searching program in Chollian. The search words, which were regarded as psychotic illness, were Schizophrenia, Psychosis, Mental illness, and Mental derangement. A total of 326 articles were classified by category and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The viewpoint of articles on psychosis consisted of these: (1) negative (direct or indirect) (2) neutral or positive (3) no specific viewpoint. RESULT: Of the 326 articles, the number with a negative description was 228 (69.9%), the number with a neutral or positive description was 43 (13.2%), and the number with no specific viewpoint was 55 (16.9%). The most frequent negative theme was psychotic patients are dangerous or violent or may commit a crime (n=118). Other negative themes were these: psychotic patients are bizarre or grotesque (n=27), psychotic patients can't function in society well(n=18), psychosis is incurable and families should bear great burden(n=16), psychosis is shameful (n=13) and psychotic patients should be institutionalized(n=6). There were also prejudices against the cause of the illness(n=18), the description of psychosis in degrading terms(n=22) and the negative description of psychiatric hospitalization(n=18) with the words such as institutionalization, imprisonment and put into etc. In the articles using the terms mental derangement or psychosis compared with mental illness, schizophrenia and in the articles describing psychotic patient compared with illness itself, the frequency of negative articles was high. Within each type of article, news, politics and culture articles more frequently had a negative description, while health articles less frequently had a negative description and most frequently had a neutral or positive description. CONCLUSION: There should be a program for monitoring newspapers for appropriate in-formation on psychosis. It might reduce social stigma and consequently help rehabilitation of psychotic patients. Also there should be endeavors to monitor other mass media and to develop a public education campaign through the mass media.
Crime ; Education ; Humans ; Institutionalization ; Mass Media ; Periodicals ; Politics ; Prejudice ; Psychotic Disorders* ; Rehabilitation ; Schizophrenia ; Shame ; Social Stigma

Menetrier's disease is a rare, characterized by the presence of large rugal folds involving part or all of the stomach. Patients with hypertrophic gastropathy often have distressing abdominal symptoms, weight loss, and edema due to gastric protem loss. A 64 year old male patient was admitted with the chief complaint of epigastric discomfort. Endoscopic, radiologic and histologic examination, revealed characteristic findings of Menetrier's disease. A case of Menetrier's disease is reported with a brief review of literature.
Edema ; Gastritis, Hypertrophic* ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Stomach ; Weight Loss

Niemann-Pick disease (NPD) is an autosomal recessive, lipid storage disorder caused by the deficiency of the lysosomal enzyme sphingomyelinase or defective cholesterol transport from lysosome to cytosol. The clinical symptoms and signs include dysphagia, loss of motor function, hepatosplenomegaly, recurred respiratory infections, seizure, mental retardation, spasticity, myoclonic jerks and ataxia, but vary depending on the type of this disease. We report a successful anesthetic experience, including endotracheal intubation with Glidescope under propofol and remifentanil infusion without neuromuscular blockade, in a 21-year old woman with Niemann-Pick disease for wound revision of gastrostomy site.
Ataxia ; Cholesterol ; Cytosol ; Deglutition Disorders ; Female ; Gastrostomy ; Humans ; Intellectual Disability ; Intubation, Intratracheal ; Lysosomes ; Muscle Spasticity ; Myoclonus ; Neuromuscular Blockade ; Niemann-Pick Diseases ; Piperidines ; Propofol ; Respiratory Tract Infections ; Seizures ; Sphingomyelin Phosphodiesterase

No abstract available.
Allografts* ; Herpesviridae* ; In Situ Hybridization*

BACKGROUND: This study was undertaken to evaluate the effect of plasma concentration of vitamin C is on the plasma total antioxidant status(TAS) in patients with paraquat intoxication. METHODS: As a preliminary research for this study, we measured plasma vitamin C levels, uric acid, TAS, and bilirubin from 100 healthy Koreans aged between 25-55 years. Various concentrations of vitamin C were constructed in vitro with normal pooled plasma between 1mg/dl and 100 mg/dL and TAS was measured. Both vitamin C concentrations and TAS were measured from the blood samples, taken at 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9 hours after a bolus injection of vitamin C(50 mg/kg) from 7 volunteers who had been recruited from medical students at our hospital. Various amounts of vitamin C were given to 10 patients with paraquat intoxication for 5 consecutive days in the morning : first day ; 100 mg single dose, second day; 500 mg single dose, third day ; 1,000 mg single dose, fourth day : 3,000 mg single dose, and fifth day ; 3,000 mg three times every 8 hours. RESULTS: The mean value of TAS and vitamin C measured in 100 healthy Korean adults was 2.22 +/-0.16 mmol/L and 0.48+/-0.10 mg/dL. Age and sex do not influence these levels(p> 0.05, data are not presented). A direct correlation was observed between TAS and vitamin C concentrations of 1 mg/dL and 100 mg/dL both in vivo and vitro. As the vitamin C concentration was increased gradually 5 consecutive days, the TAS values increased in the same way as follows : first day(vitamin C 100 mg) 2.26+/-0.98 mmol/L, second day(vitamin C 500 mg) 2.76+/-0.78 mmol/L, third day(vitamin C 1.000 mg) 2.81+/-0.68 mmol/L, fourth day(vitamin C 3.000 mg) 3.18 mmol/L. On the fifth day when 3.000 mg of vitamin C was given by bolus intravenous injection 3 times(every 8 hours for a day), the TAS values measured one hour after the injection was 3.58+/-0.37 mmol/L. CONCLUSION: When vitamin C is used as a free radical scavenger, the loading dose and maintenance dose should be around 2278 mg intravenous bolus and 146 mg/hour. High doses of vitamin C are effective and safe for patients with acute paraquat intoxication.
Adult ; Ascorbic Acid* ; Bilirubin ; Free Radical Scavengers ; Humans ; Injections, Intravenous ; Paraquat* ; Plasma* ; Pulmonary Fibrosis ; Students, Medical ; Uric Acid ; Vitamins* ; Volunteers

BACKGROUND: In recent times, it has been gradually emphasized that an aspect of diseases impacting on the quality of an individuals life goes beyond physical impairments with the development of economic and medical technology. Skin diseases especially may be associated with a variety of negative psychologic effects, such as low self-esteem, feelings of inferiority because skin lesions are exposed to others and cause cosmetic problems. Many researchers have been already established various dermatology-specific questionnaires and disease-specific questionnaires in developed countries, but these are rare in Korea. OBJECTIVE: We tried to survey the social, psychological and physical aspects of patients with vitiligo and psoriasis to evaluate the impact of skin diseases on the quality of life in Korea. METHODS: We inquired after 64 patients by using a dermatology-specific questionnaires Skindex recently developed by Chren et al. It has 6I-items and eight scales including cognitive, social, depression, fear, embarrassment, anger, physieal discomfort, and physical limitatians.
Anger ; Depression ; Developed Countries ; Humans ; Korea ; Psoriasis* ; Quality of Life* ; Skin Diseases* ; Skin* ; Vitiligo* ; Weights and Measures ; Surveys and Questionnaires

OBJECTIVES: Any form of dialysis must provide a sufficient replenishment of buffer. Lactate with a con- centration of 35 to 40mM/L is now the only buffer routinely used in CAPD. Buffer balance using lactate solutions will be governed essentially by the balance between the H+ generated, the amount of bicarbonate lost into the peritoneal effluent, and the lactate absorbed from the dialysate. Factors affecting buffer balance in CAPD patients will therefore include dietary protein intake which determine H+ generation and ultrafiltration which can affect bicarbonate loss. Although several studies reported a different prevalence of metabolic acidosis in their CAPD patients, it is uncertain whether the same prevalence of metabolic acidosis(MA) or the similar characteristics of acid-base status of Western CAPD patients can be found in Asian patients with smaller body size and relatively less amount of dietary animal protein intake. This study was undertaken to know the current acid-base status of CAPD patients in Korea with the exact information about buffer balance. We will also investigate the factors affecting acid-base homeostasis in CAPD patients such as dietary protein intake, the individual membrane characteristics and the various indices of dialysis adequacy and nutritional status of patients. METHODS: The acid-base status of Korean CAPD patients was assessed based on arterial blood gas analysis along with various nutritional parameters including subjective global assessment(SGA), anthropometric measurements and standard peritoneal equilibration test in 198 clinically stable patients main- tained on CAPD for more than 6 months using 35- 40mM/L of lactate-based dialysate(M:F 106:92, mean age 47.9 years, mean duration 45.3 months). RESULTS: Mean arterial bicarbonate concentration was 24.6+/-3.4mM/L with a range of 16.2-36.7mM/L and mean dialytic base gain was 29.4+/-15.2mM/day. Only 28(14.1%) patients showed MA while 52(26.3%) patients had a various degree of metabolic alkalosis. Normal acid-base status was observed in 75 patients(37.9%). The rest showed mixed acid-base abnormalities of respiratory origin. Patients with MA (mean HCO3 19.5+/-1.9mM/L) showed significantly higher serum albumin(4.01+/-0.38 vs. 3.59+/-0.46 g/dl, P<0.001) & protein equivalent of nitrogen appearance (NPNA, 1.2+/-0.1 vs. 0.9+/-0.2 g/kg/day, P<0.05) compared to the metabolic alkalosis group(mean HCO3 28.1+/-1.9mM/L). Dialytic protein loss(6.39+/-1.86 vs. 7.64+/-2.71 g/day, P<0.01) and D/PCr(0.60+/-0.09 vs. 0.71+/-0.13, P<0.05) were significantly lower in MA group. There were no significant differences in residual renal function, KT/VUrea, number of malnourished patients by SGA and other anthropometric parameters according to the acid-base status of patients. There were significant inverse correlations of arterial HCO3 with serum albumin and NPNA while HCO3 was positively correlated with duration of dialysis, ultrafiltration volume, dialytic lactate gain and dialytic protein loss. CONCLUSION: Our results on the acid-base status of Korean CAPD patients including a generally lower incidence of MA appear to be quite different from other reports based on the Western population. The peritoneal membrane transport characteristics can be one of the important factors determining the acid- base status of peritoneal dialysis patients. Duration of dialysis and protein catabolic rate also influence arterial bicarbonate level independently.
Acid-Base Equilibrium* ; Acidosis* ; Alkalosis ; Animals ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Blood Gas Analysis ; Body Size ; Dialysis ; Dietary Proteins ; Homeostasis ; Humans ; Incidence* ; Korea ; Lactic Acid ; Membranes ; Nitrogen ; Nutritional Status ; Peritoneal Dialysis ; Peritoneal Dialysis, Continuous Ambulatory* ; Prevalence ; Serum Albumin ; Ultrafiltration

The recurrence of viral hepatitis B or C after liver transplantation is almost universal but their clinical courses and outcomes are vary widely. We investigated four cases of rapidly progressive and fatal recurrent viral hepatitis following liver transplantation, which were rapidly progressive and fatal. Case 1 was a 58-year-old male, who developed recurrent viral hepatitisC. Case 2, 3, and 4 were a 59-year-old female, a 42-year-old male, and a 50-year-old male, respectively, who developed recurrent viral hepatitis B. In cases 1 and 2, the histopathological features of the first liver biopsies were prominent ballooning degeneration of the hepatocytes but later biopsies revealed significant lobular activity. Case 3 began with a marked fatty change and mild lobular and porto-periportal activity and progressed to severe lobular activity and septal fibrosis. In case 4, the first liver biopsy revealed minimal lobular activity but the second biopsy revealed severe lobular activity.
Adult ; Biopsy ; Female ; Fibrosis ; Hepatitis B ; Hepatitis* ; Hepatocytes ; Humans ; Liver Transplantation* ; Liver* ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Recurrence

No abstract available.
Bronchoalveolar Lavage Fluid* ; Bronchoalveolar Lavage* ; Early Diagnosis* ; Pneumocystis carinii* ; Pneumocystis* ; Pneumonia, Pneumocystis*

The authors analysed retrospectively, 69 cases of chronic subdural hematoma admitted to the Department of Neurological Surgery, from January 1992 to February 1995. All hematomas were operated on by one burr hole trephination and continuous closed-system cather drainage system. The results were as follows: 1) Male was more frequently involved than female with ratio of 5.3:1 and the incidence was prredominent in the patients whose ages were over 50. 2) History of head trauma was found in 52 cases(75.4%), among which habitual alcoholism was found in 6 cases(8.7%). 3) The major symptoms and signs at admission were headache(55.1%), hemiparesis(44.9%), and mental changes(30.4%). 4) On the brain CT scan, hematoma showed low, iso, mixed, and high in density, and the shapes of hematoma were crescenteric, biconvex, planoconvex, and concave in order of frequency. 5) We have found a significant relationship between the neurological grade at admission and the prognosis, and noted full recovery in 45 cases(65.2%) and no d eath as a result of 1-burr hole trephination.
Alcoholism ; Brain ; Craniocerebral Trauma ; Drainage ; Female ; Hematoma ; Hematoma, Subdural, Chronic* ; Humans ; Incidence ; Male ; Prognosis ; Retrospective Studies ; Tomography, X-Ray Computed ; Trephining